I'd say that 50% of my rockets always veer off far to the side. 90% hit chance my arse. Just had one miss after a group of Mutons WARPED IN OUT OF NOWHERE. They literally appeared in the middle of a heated battle, where I clearly had sight.

I'm really starting to dislike the dice rolls in this game because the percentages seem to be straight up lying to you in numerous cases.

I've had 4 85% shots miss IN A ROW. The chances of that actually happening are ridiculously low. I've recently missed a 95% and a 98% and had a friend miss a 100% shot.

The game still isn't that hard if you're playing cautiously but man, I really don't like the numbers game that's going on behind the scenes.

Something I noticed about floaters is when they're in the air, its more of a 10% you'll hit them, even if you use a sniper who has a 90% chance. I've saved the game, shot at a floater in the air and 3 different soldiers all missed no matter how many times I would reload. This has happened more than one occurence

I would n't say constantly tbh.

I've played 2 full classic mode games by now and the rockets are on target most of the time, maybe every 1/5 - 1/10 will miss (or so). And as someone using 2 heavies with 2 rockets each most of the time i've had quite a lot of shots to look at the averages.

One mission my colonel misfired and shot 2 rookies in the back right next to him. ^.^

The next he saves the day with 7+ enemies on screen cyberdisks, crysalids you name it, by 2 perfectly placed buffed rockets and a grenade demolishing half a level but enabling the rest of the team to mop up.

Something I noticed about floaters is when they're in the air, its more of a 10% you'll hit them, even if you use a sniper who has a 90% chance. I've saved the game, shot at a floater in the air and 3 different soldiers all missed no matter how many times I would reload. This has happened more than one occurence

@musclerider: But there would be random times where they would miss then I'd load the save and they'd hit them

@SomeDeliCook said:

@musclerider: But there would be random times where they would miss then I'd load the save and they'd hit them

Did you by chance perform slightly different actions between the shots (before or after the save)? As enemy placement/movement and the actions of your own squad all adjust how the random seed is used.

So for example you miss a shot, reload and you will always miss (if you just keep trying the same shot over and over)

But if say you reload then do slightly different actions, then the seed is adjusted and you might hit.

@SomeDeliCook: If you shoot with a different soldier first each time it will change the seeding variable and thus produce a different result; if you consistently notice all 3 missing (it's only the first shot that's going to stay the same if you're using the same guy) then your above statement is most likely correct. The game lies.

@SomeDeliCook said:

@musclerider: But there would be random times where they would miss then I'd load the save and they'd hit them

If you changed up the order of the attacks every time you loaded you could get different result (as different shots were getting different numbers from the original seed) but if you reload and shoot in the same order you will get the same result, as that percentage is checking against the same number regardless of the number of reloads. You'd have to 'waste' the seed with another solider's shot.

@Tennmuerti: @Fredchuckdave: @twigger89: Thats all really good to know, thanks a lot guys. Makes a lot more sense now

Also didn't mean to slightly derail the thread. Sorry!

@Vitor: You're right, it's extremely unlikely, but the thing about a 90% chance is that it's not 100%. Any non-zero probability occurrence can happen. That includes missing four straight 85% shots on the same target. I mean, the chances of four happening in sequence is (0.15)^4 = 0.00050625 for four straight misses, but you gotta remember that each shot actually has a 15% chance of missing.

If it helps, consider the 0.250 batting average hitter (10% better chance to hit, but still) who has a miraculous four-hit game. That guy has a 75% chance of making an out every at-bat, but we don't freak out about how the RNG in baseball must be cheating.

tl;dr: Human perception of probability is inherently skewed

In my ~40 hours of Classic mode, admittedly not using a lot of explosives, I've not really noticed any missed rockets (or grenades) at all. If anything, I've had the feeling that Rockets were super-accurate.

Weird spell of bad luck?

I have played for 20 hours, on classic. I have shot about 20 rockets. I have only had 1 veer off, that was like my third rocket.

Other than that I shoot and hit. I even shot rockets above targets and they detonate above them and hit all below.....Its just how life work pal.

Oh also. Remember their is things that ALTER your CHANCES. Enemies have an ability called Hardened? which gives them better cover. There is alot of things. That if an 100% is not guaranteed since there is small effects in play that isnt counted in the tally up. Since its all from your soldiers side not from the enemies side, what perks it has and such.

AND

Luck can be a bitch. Dont get paranoid "OH THE DICE ROLLS ARE AGAINST ME!! THEY ARE BROKEN!" no ....life is against. Its the fundamentals of life that can be in your favor or not. As an Athiest I have to say its just chance. A religious person can easily (thou is wrong to say so) their god is against them.

I can have cancer and be cured with little to no treatment. I would say a series of unknown events have cured me. Religious people can say its from their god.

What I am trying to say is....you are treating the dice as if its a god with plans to screw with you...its not...its just chance! That is how percentages work.

Just be thankfull your luck is poor in the game.

I myself have great luck in the game. However last week I lost my wallet, I didnt get a job I went for, I havnt heard back from the last 10. The Jobcenter is starting to lube up a glove to give me a full cavity check to prove I am looking for a job. I work programme I am on is getting weirder and lubing up the same gloves.......the list goes on.

The worse thing is the other point he mentioned. I get really annoyed when enemies magically appear mid-battle where I have clean lines of sight.

I'll repost what I said in another topic:

"I did an experiment once. I lost a character early on in a mission, and I was frustrated, so I reloaded. The turn began with one of my characters taking an 85% chance shot. She missed it in my botched turn, and missed again when I reloaded. I thought that it was odd that I would miss such a high percentage shot twice in a row. Not impossible, simply not probable. So, I reloaded. Miss. I reloaded multiple times, and missed every time. I changed things after a while. I moved her up a few places, bringing my hit chance to 90%. She still missed every time.

I really don't know what to think about this. When is the hit calculated? When are the dice rolled? Does the game blatantly lie to you about the chance of hitting a target? It seems that, in reality, those shots had a 0% chance of hitting the target. If this was the case, the game should tell me. If the game is calculating these things in another way, it shouldn't lead me to believe that it's a dice roll."

I would love it if Firaxis would address this. I still enjoy the game, I just feel like it's lying to me.

@Vitor: Have you tried aiming for the ground rather than at the aliens.. I haven't played the new one (yet), but rockets in the old one almost always missed unless you tried that little trick.

Deciding to browse around on the subject. I found these posts GameFaqs. I am not saying they are 100% (jokeing aside. nothing! is 100%!) right however it does give food for thought on the psychology of the matter. However I think Vitors problem simply is his luck with rockets is poor.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/655782-xcom-enemy-unknown/64325139

If you play XCOM with the mindset that every roll is 50%, you'll stay sane a lot longer.

@BoG said:

I'll repost what I said in another topic:

"I did an experiment once. I lost a character early on in a mission, and I was frustrated, so I reloaded. The turn began with one of my characters taking an 85% chance shot. She missed it in my botched turn, and missed again when I reloaded. I thought that it was odd that I would miss such a high percentage shot twice in a row. Not impossible, simply not probable. So, I reloaded. Miss. I reloaded multiple times, and missed every time. I changed things after a while. I moved her up a few places, bringing my hit chance to 90%. She still missed every time.

I really don't know what to think about this. When is the hit calculated? When are the dice rolled? Does the game blatantly lie to you about the chance of hitting a target? It seems that, in reality, those shots had a 0% chance of hitting the target. If this was the case, the game should tell me. If the game is calculating these things in another way, it shouldn't lead me to believe that it's a dice roll."

I would love it if Firaxis would address this. I still enjoy the game, I just feel like it's lying to me.

It's not lying to you.

As other have already posted the game uses (like other firaxis games and many other turn based games) a random seed as the randomization factor that is introduced into it's calculations. This is done in order to lessen the syndrome of cheesing the % chances via reloads.

To grossly oversimplify: map loads, a RNG (random number generation) is performed say 0-10000, and you get a for example 3598 or whatever, that's your random seed. When you take the shot this random number is introduced into the complex equation calculating the shot, your modifiers like cover, range, weapon, soldier accuracy and likewise used in the equation The non random numbers basically create a range that if the random number corresponds to - you hit. For example a 80% chance is 8035-10000, your seed (3598) is less, you miss. After the shot the existing random seed is then modified by some factor to produce the next random seed for the next calculation. This means that if you just reload the game from before the shot it remembers your existing random seed (it's part of the save) and uses the exact same random seed to compare against your modifiers, hence the shot will keep missing and missing if it missed the first time.

The shown % in the tooltips is the approximate (to within 1%) range that is created by your modifiers that is "compared" to the random seed. If you do not try to cheese the game % chances via reloads then the percentages the game shows you actually very well reflect your average chances of hitting.

So basically it is a dice roll, the dice roll just happened a long time ago and the game simply remembers it (and modifies it (non randomly) for further shots and actions); to prevent you from re rolling the dice over and over to get the desired outcome whenever you wish it.

Again this is an oversimplification. Actual process and calculations will vary. But it's the laymans jist of how such systems work.

.

A good example of a system not using a persistent random seed - infinity engine rpgs. You could basically save before every sword strike or spell cast then if you missed or got crited for example or spell got resisted you could just reload over and over until the dice rolled your way (or to a natural 20 lol) and save/load your way to victory.

@BoG: There is a random seed that the dice are rolled against at the start of a mission. Saving and reloading will never result in a different event because the dice roll that it checks against already happened. Moving first doesn't change it either because it's the dice roll for that turn. You'd have to walk around for a turn doing nothing to get a different result.

Here's a simplified version of what's going on here:

A random seed generates three probabilities for three actions in a game. One for each turn.

1, 99, and 27.

Your shot has an 80% chance to hit, so we'll simplify that and say that your soldier is rolling a chance to hit of 80.

In turn one, no matter what you do with that soldier, you will only hit if your chance to hit > 1.

In turn two, no matter what you do with that soldier, you will only hit if your chance to hit > 99

In turn three, no matter what you do with that soldier, you will only hit if your chance to hit > 27.

You'll hit in turns 1 and 3, but no matter how many times you reload on turn 2, you will NEVER hit unless you're taking a 100% shot. It's not that the game is cheating, it's that it did its math before you hit "Fire".

I don't know the specifics of their system, but I assume this applies to rockets as well. Your base roll on a rocket is 90%, but there is a 1 in 10 chance that the game will roll 90-99.

@BoG said:

I'll repost what I said in another topic:

"I did an experiment once. I lost a character early on in a mission, and I was frustrated, so I reloaded. The turn began with one of my characters taking an 85% chance shot. She missed it in my botched turn, and missed again when I reloaded. I thought that it was odd that I would miss such a high percentage shot twice in a row. Not impossible, simply not probable. So, I reloaded. Miss. I reloaded multiple times, and missed every time. I changed things after a while. I moved her up a few places, bringing my hit chance to 90%. She still missed every time.

I really don't know what to think about this. When is the hit calculated? When are the dice rolled? Does the game blatantly lie to you about the chance of hitting a target? It seems that, in reality, those shots had a 0% chance of hitting the target. If this was the case, the game should tell me. If the game is calculating these things in another way, it shouldn't lead me to believe that it's a dice roll."

I would love it if Firaxis would address this. I still enjoy the game, I just feel like it's lying to me.

But it's been explained, multiple times. Both here (in this very thread even) and elsewhere.

The way random numbers work in computer games is you give the random number generator a seed, usually a really large number, something like the number of milliseconds from 1970 until now or something like this. The generator then takes this number and generates a series of other numbers based on the seed in a pseudo random fashion (pseudo random because if you know the seed and the algorithm you can predict the numbers). In XCOM these numbers are stored in a list which is generated at the start of the mission and saved in your saved game. Each dice roll the uses one entry in this list to determine what happens. This means that the outcome of any given dice roll in the game is basically predefined from the start: you can't reload the game and expect a different outcome, that just moves you to an earlier number in the list, not a different one.

Basically, if you save your game at the start of the mission and take a set number of actions, the scenario will play out in the EXACT same way, every time. Any shot that missed will still miss, all enemies will be in the same place, any crits will still crit, no matter how many times you reload. The game is not lying to you, it is preventing you from abusing the quicksave option to cheese your way through the game.

If you really want to make that 80% shot, don't reload and take the same shot over and over again, reload, fire another shot, then take the 80% shot. The first shot will have used up the number in the list which caused your 80% shot to miss and the new number has a good chance of leading to a hit (an 80% chance, to be precise).

@Tennmuerti: @Anund: When Brad started talking about the RNG being rigged in this week's Bombcast I almost shut it off right there. I'm glad there other GB fans out there spreading the good word about how seeding works.

@ElCapitan said:

@Tennmuerti: @Anund: When Brad started talking about the RNG being rigged in this week's Bombcast I almost shut it off right there. I'm glad there other GB fans out there spreading the good word about how seeding works.

That made me want to yell at my phone, just a little bit ;)

@ElCapitan: Agreed. This is probably one of the easiest things for them NOT to fuck up, so it's amusing to see people latch on to this right away as a bug.

@rebgav: Exactly. It's only ridiculously low if you sit down and purposely try to roll 4 misses in a row at 85% at one go. MATH!

@Tennmuerti: @Anund: @ElCapitan: Thank you all for that great explanation.

My conclusion? I will never ever understand math.